


hello, I'm your mind giving you someone to talk to

by unwindmyself



Series: 'cause there's no salvation for a bad girl [9]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, F/F, Gen, Mentors, Reform School, Teen Romance, Teenage criminals, Unintentional Redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-20 23:57:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20684096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unwindmyself/pseuds/unwindmyself
Summary: Ruby and Snowflake meet in Authority custody and bond, despite the disapproval of others.





	hello, I'm your mind giving you someone to talk to

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not kidding Snowflake is my favorite trash panda in the whole world.

Vampire jail is either really tame or Ruby’s idea of tame is skewed because she grew up in a cult.

That’s what Daisy - infuriatingly kind, infuriatingly pretty Daisy - has been saying from the beginning: that it’s not her fault, she was basically brainwashed, and by her only family for her whole life! (Daisy grew up in a bad situation, too, and her Maker was in, if not a cult, a nest. This, and/or possibly the fact that her sister is fucking Secretary Morse and sometimes she is too, makes her enough of an expert to be brought in to help, even if she’s not a professional therapist or even a member of the Authority.)

Ruby is loathe to admit it (“brainwashed” makes her sound so weak, and weakness is the thing she was, like, raised _not _to have) but when she realizes she spends less time locked in her bedroom here in prison than she did in the house she grew up in, she at least has to acknowledge that she’s damaged. She very graciously does this acknowledging by not trying to hurt the next underling that tries to get her to drink that synthetic crap. Progress, even if nobody says so.

(Daisy is also the loudest advocate for keeping Ruby alive, Ruby the would-be Sanguinist savior who’ll be eternally smelling like teen spirit. A lot of the actual Authority members could really go either way; she didn’t actually kill any of them in the battle leading up to her arrest, but she’s kind of been a brat since she got here.)

Maybe two weeks after this, Ruby is moved from the literal bars-for-doors jail space to a small but at least livable, plain but respectably furnished bedroom on the floor above. They still lock her in at dawn, when she should be asleep, but that (and the fact that a lot of the rooms need to be bio-unlocked) aside she’s pretty much got free reign of the Authority building.

It’s like being on house arrest in the White House: the gym is badass (badder-ass after she recommends some equipment upgrades) and there’s a Hogwarts-sized library that even she (a sworn non-nerd) can admit is impressive and she finally has the time to watch all the movies she wants to. It’s cool.

Okay, so she still doesn’t have, like, friends. Daisy is the closest, and by extension her girlfriend Jemma, but they’re basically her social workers; the actual Authority employees range from awkwardly civil (Secretary Morse - first name Bobbi, not that Ruby has permission to use it - who’s taken point on her case) to chilly and disinterested (May - first name and official title both still a mystery to Ruby - who’s the enforcer or whatever around here). Other prisoners come and go, but they’re mostly confined to their cells and they’re mostly the exact kind of man she swore to herself to avoid.

But she’s happy. Weirdly.

* * *

She’s sprawled out in the formal lounge for a change of pace (and kinda because she thinks it’s funny to undermine the seriousness of the room by just being her punk teenager self in it) when May and some other officers haul in a new girl. She’s dressed for a post-apocalyptic wasteland, with rips in her clothes and messy makeup around her eyes, a gun on her hip and pads on her knees; being arrested hasn’t fazed her, either, given her calm and even cheerful attitude.

Oh, and she’s hitting on May. 

“Have you ever killed someone with your thighs?” she’s asking, sounding almost reverent. She’s Australian or something, Ruby notices, and it makes all her vowels twist around cutely. “I’d love to watch you try, that kinda power is gorgeous.”

May looks totally unimpressed, so Ruby figures that this has been going on awhile, possibly since the arrest. New girl is winning her over already: annoying May is one of her favorite pastimes.

“Hey,” she calls, leaning back on the couch as languidly as she can. “May, who’s your friend?”

May rolls her eyes and doesn’t reply, but one of the others, Piper, breaks away and explains to Ruby, “We caught a group trying to burn down the king of Florida’s estate."

Ruby wrinkles her nose. “Oh, but he sucks.”

Piper doesn’t look like she disagrees with this entirely, but she still says, “We don’t kill just because we don’t like someone,” like she’s on _Sesame Street._

“Whatever,” Ruby retorts. “So new girl…”

“She’s the only one of the group we caught,” Piper explains. “The others all fled or got killed.”

“Nice job,” Ruby snarks. “She looks like a real tough one to get your hands on.”

“Tough as you, anyway,” Piper replies dryly.

Ruby doesn’t fuss at that, mostly because she knows she deserves it. (Piper puts up with her slightly better than a lot of the others.) Instead she asks, “She kill any of you?”

“I don’t know who killed who,” Piper says. “She killed someone, though. She confessed to it already.”

“Aw,” Ruby pouts, disappointed. Confessions are deeply boring. But she’s desperate for companionship, she could still get into this girl.

“Have you learned _anything_?” Piper sighs.

The answer, despite Ruby’s totally impolite behavior, is yes. She knows that killing is unadvisable and vampire domination is dangerous and that she’s the savior of absolutely nothing. But just because she’s smartened up in Authority custody doesn’t mean she’s not still a snarky asshole.

She waits for all the officials to clear out before she strolls into the holding cells with pillows from the lounge, squeezes one through the bars of new girl’s cell, and drops the other on the concrete floor to sit on. “Hi,” she says, staring like a challenge.

“Hi,” the girl replies, dragging the word out. “You’re not one of the cops, are you?”

“Hardly,” Ruby scoffs. “More like their collective rehabilitation project. I’m their best-case Harley Quinn.”

“Their what?”

“I’m the dangerous lunatic they’re training to be good,” Ruby says.

“Ooh, how dangerous?” the girl coos.

“I was raised to be a vampire messiah,” Ruby says. “The cause was bullshit, but I’m still a killer.”

“Not only,” the girl says, tilting her head. “There’s a part of you that isn’t like that at all.”

Yeah, Ruby thinks, the stupid fragile part. The part that didn’t - doesn’t - hurt animals and misses how strawberries taste and wanted more than she ever said for her mom to love her. It’s the part of her that Daisy saw and saved, but it’s also the part she’s still unlearning to hate. She doesn’t feel right about this stranger seeing it.

“It’s a good thing,” the new girl adds. “Means you wanna be part of the universe.”

Ruby makes a face. “You’re weird.”

The girl shrugs. “Name’s Snowflake. What about you?”

“Weird,” Ruby repeats, then: “I’m Ruby.”

“Oh, gosh,” Snowflake sighs. “Like a proper fairy tale. Skin of snow, lips of rubies, that’s the stuff of cursed maidens and princesses.”

“There’s no drugs for vampires,” Ruby says, “and I know that, but you sound like you’re on drugs.”

Snowflake shakes her head. “I’m just connected.”

“So you’re, like, a hippie?” Ruby asks, wrinkling her nose. “That doesn’t make sense. Hippies are pacifists, you’re a killer.”

“No, no,” Snowflake says. “I - well, I’ve killed, but it’s not really killing, I’m setting them free.”

“Yeah, from life,” Ruby snarks. “No shame. I don’t like most of the monarchs anyway.”

“You’re backwards,” Snowflake says. “It wasn’t the king we wanted, it was all the drones around him. They weren’t made right, they deserved to be free.”

“Whatever helps you sleep,” Ruby shrugs.

Snowflake pouts. “No, I mean it,” she insists. “They had evil in their blood and it was infecting their hearts. We set them free, truly.”

“Who’s we?” Ruby asks.

“I thought we were family,” Snowflake says, and all the joy goes out of her expression. “Guess not.”

“‘Cause they let you get arrested?”

“Like a sweet sacrificial lamb!” Snowflake exclaims. “The second it turned against him, Sarge abandoned me, and normally it’d be Jaco telling him no, but he’d…” She sniffles and red starts to rim her eyes.

Well, shit.

“Was he, like… your Maker or whatever?” Ruby asks.

“Just my friend,” Snowflake says. “But a true one, who tried to watch my back. A brother, like.”

Ruby has never had such a friend, but she nods. “Sorry, then,” she mumbles. “But kinda fuck the one who left you. That’s cowardly.”

“I bet nobody ever left you,” Snowflake suggests. “Being a little messiah and all.”

“They’re all dead now,” Ruby says. “But even before, I was more a prop to them than a person. A talking doll. Their prophecy.”

“You musta had parents, though,” Snowflake says.

“Had a mom, at least,” Ruby says. “Technically. But I wasn’t her kid, just her cause. If she raised me right, and I became the Sanguinists’ good little monster, they’d give her eternal life. She wanted it, so she tried.”

“Did she get it?” Snowflake asks, awed. She listens more actively than anyone Ruby’s ever met.

“Not for long,” Ruby says. “Not long enough to make giving her only child to a cult worth it.”

“That’s why you’re here,” Snowflake not-asks.

“I was supposed to help them take over the world,” Ruby says. “It didn’t go according to plan, but the plan wasn’t mine, so the bleeding hearts among the chancellors and all decided not to end me.”

For the first time, Snowflake looks genuinely worried. “Are they gonna do that to me?” she whispers.

“You wouldn’t be here if that was a concern,” Ruby says. “Maybe you’re leverage, but you’ll be fine. Besides.” She grins. “I think having a friend will be oh-so-good for my rehabilitation.”

Snowflake’s eyes go big. “Oh, you mean it?”

“I’ve never really had one of those, so I might be bad at it,” Ruby shrugs, “but I like a challenge.”

* * *

Ruby has one of her meetings with Daisy the next night, luckily, so she gets through the check-in questions effortlessly before asking, “What is having friends like?”

“I’m assuming you don’t count me,” Daisy says wryly. 

“This is nice,” Ruby demurs, “but it wasn’t, it isn’t, natural. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, you’re right,” Daisy says. “I’m not the same as having a real, non-court-ordered friend.”

Ruby nods. “I just got thinking, and I never really had one. I didn’t even know people my own age.”

Daisy’s eyebrow goes up. “You’re being pitiful on purpose, aren’t you?” she asks. “What’s up?”

“I met the new girl,” Ruby says. Of course Daisy saw through her act, Daisy knows how to read people and how to play them almost as well as she does herself. “Snowflake.”

“Oh.” Daisy actually winces. “I, uh. She’s intense, I heard. Also a confessed killer.”

“I think she’s another kid who just got caught in a crappy situation,” Ruby says innocently. “Like me.”

“And you… what, exactly?” Daisy asks.

“I think we could help her,” Ruby says. “And I know having a friend would help me.”

“It’s not my call,” Daisy says.

“Couldn’t you ask?” Ruby presses. “I promise it’ll be a good thing.”

“Well, it might get her off May, anyway,” Daisy muses.

* * *

After six nights of what Ruby assumes is bureaucracy and bullshit, they give Snowflake the clearance to move out of jail and into what Ruby has affectionately deemed “vampire reform school.” 

“I guess we’re sharing a room for accountability,” she remarks as lackeys move a second bed into her small cell/room, then shuffle out unceremoniously. “Or they’re trying to keep us humble.”

“I don’t mind,” Snowflake says, flopping on her new bed and rolling around gleefully. “I’m used to sleeping with people near. Gosh, I haven’t had a real bed in years, either.”

Ruby makes a face. “Where’d you sleep?”

“Coffins, mostly,” Snowflake says. “Isn’t that proper?”

“I mean, I guess if you can’t get underground or to a light-tight space,” Ruby says. “I just wouldn’t like it.”

“Ooh, you claustrophobic?” Snowflake crows.

“No,” Ruby snaps, because she’s not. She’s not afraid of anything. That was trained out of her years ago. “It’s just such a cliche. Plus it’s uncomfortable. I like pillows, thank you.” To emphasize this, she grabs one of hers and hugs it to her chest.

“You like beds ‘cause they’re normal,” Snowflake surmises. “That’s okay, that’s kinda sweet.” Ruby scowls - she’s not _sweet_, she’s the Destroyer of Worlds, or she was supposed to be, she could be if she still believed in it - and maybe Snowflake wants to fix it, so she adds, “I think I’d be sentimental for normal if I’d ever known it. I’m glad I didn’t, though. Means I don’t know any better.”

“I mean, my so-called normal childhood home had an evil coven in the basement,” Ruby points out. “That’s not that normal.”

“But you had _sorta _normal,” Snowflake says. “Your ma kept the house all nice-like so any passing stranger would be mollified, didn’t she?”

“Basically,” Ruby says. “Woulda sucked for her if social services showed up.”

“Less for you,” Snowflake says quietly. “But they say it all happens for a reason, the universe has a plan. You had to be there so you could be here.”

There’s suggestion in that, and Ruby’s eyebrow goes all the way up. “Why am I supposed to be here?”

Snowflake smiles secretively and declares (instead of answering), “We lived in a semi-truck. It was plenty kitted out, a microwave an’ a couch an’ a killer stereo, but it was still a truck full of corpses. Kinda eerie, really.” She shrugs. “But not the worst. I used to sleep in tombs, sometimes, before I got reborn. Cold, hard, but it was a roof.” 

Ruby doesn’t know why she’s so surprised by this. “You were homeless?” she asks.

“The planet is my home,” Snowflake says. “But sometimes I didn’t have a steady place to sleep, yeah. It wasn’t awful, I met lots of interesting people and learned stuff. I just wandered. S’how I met my Maker, then once she’d gone how I met Jaco an’ them. We looked out for each other. They showed me a purpose.”

“Ending bad vampires,” Ruby says. 

“Was more complicated than that,” Snowflake mutters almost petulantly, but then she nods. “I’m good at it, helping people on. Re-reborning.”

Ruby makes a face. “Why don’t you just call it killing? That’s what it is.”

“We don’t die,” Snowflake says patiently, “we just change. Leave our shells like butterflies to become something bigger.”

“The molecules,” Ruby murmurs.

“The who?” Snowflake asks, tilting her head.

“Molecules,” Ruby repeats, leaning forward on her hands. “The littlest pieces that make you up. Science stuff.” She waits for a response, but all Snowflake does is shrug. “Dr. Jemma talks about them sometimes. They make up everything, and even though we die, or we change, or whatever, they don’t die. So, like, the molecules that used to be my mom might be part of a tree now, or Jemma’s brother Leo’s molecules might be a monkey.”

“Real brother, or by Maker’s blood?” Snowflake asks. “An’ who’s Jemma?” The questions are, as usual for her, out of order.

“Dr. Jemma is Daisy’s girlfriend,” Ruby says, because by now Snowflake knows about Daisy, at least. “And a doctor, obviously. And her vampire brother. I guess he died or re-reborned or whatever recently and this idea helps her, like, deal?”

Snowflake nods in understanding. “I hope his molecules are a monkey, then,” she says. “But even so, it’s not always easy when your people move forward unexpectedly and you haven’t yet.”

Ruby shrugs. “Guess so,” she says. “I’m not sure I ever really had people.”

“You do now,” Snowflake says decisively.

* * *

Surprisingly it’s Jemma, mild-mannered Dr. Jemma, that broaches the subject of Ruby’s new possible entanglement. “You know,” she says, “we would never tell you who - _what_, what you couldn’t do.”

Ruby snorts. “Nice Freudian slip,” she says. “You rehearse that in the mirror?”

Jemma flusters, which makes Daisy snap, “Mean girl isn’t a good look on you.”

“Disapproving auntie isn’t a good look on you two,” Ruby retorts. “I like Snowflake. She’s fucked up, but she’s cool. She’s kind of a sadist -”

“More than kind of,” Jemma declares.

“But she’s also kind of a hippie,” Ruby continues, rolling her eyes. “And we’re both big girls. We can do who we want.”

“We’re just concerned she might be an… influence,” Jemma tuts. “Especially if you’re, well…”

“Ew,” Ruby exclaims. “I’m not discussing my sex life with you, gross.”


End file.
